Chapter 7

I sat on the ground taking several deep breaths. I touched my face, pulled down my hood, and felt the top of my head for blood but there was none. I looked around the barn. The inside was nearly pitch-black. The SUV’s headlights provided enough light to see. Eric was on his side taking deep breaths as well.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Just let me catch my breath,” he said while huffing and puffing.

We stood and brushed ourselves off. Loud banging on the doors caused us to jump. It had to be the birds still. Would they break through the doors, especially since they were old and flimsy? Steve slid a wooden plank across slots on the doors. It seemed to hold the doors steady. I wasn’t sure if it would hold, but even with the birds’ banging, I still took the moment to let out a faint sigh. Steve breathed heavily as he looked at the door.

“H-hopefully this will h-hold,” he said with a chatter in his voice.

A noise came from the foot of the door. I looked down and saw a crow digging its head under the door trying to peck at Steve’s foot.

“Watch out!” I shouted. He looked down and screamed. He stomped on the crow’s head, kicked it out, and staggered a few steps backwards. The doors’ rattling seemed to last for an eternity as wooden chips broke off. I took a few steps back in case the birds broke through. The rattling eventually stopped, and the birds sounded like they were flapping away.

‘Did they stop?’ I wondered.

I stood staring at the door for several moments. The situation just got to me as I couldn’t even move my legs. I thought I was going to fall back onto the ground. I wiped my face with my hands. Steve and Eric both had blank faces and appeared lost in thought. Steve still breathed heavily. Eric had tears in his eyes.

“Guys,” I called out. Steve slowly turned toward me. Eric was still frozen. I touched him on the shoulder causing him to jump. He looked at me with widened eyes. “Eric, are you alright?”

“Y-yeah,” he slowly said.

I glanced around the barn’s interior again. It looked very old and worn just as much as the exterior. Despite the heavily snow, none of it came in. A loud, whistling gust of wind blew through causing the wooden planks to creak and buckle. I walked around the barn examining the boarded walls. They looked aged and creaked heavily in the wind but appeared sturdy. It didn’t seem that the birds would be able to break through. I let out another sigh and heard the SUV’s motor shut off. Its lights went off, but my eyes adjusted to the dark. I walked to the side passenger door and hopped in the seat. Kate’s eyes were wide. She looked all around up through the bloodied windshield at the barn.

“This barn seems safe. I think we’ll be alright for now,” I said softly.

“Alright? What do you mean alright?” she asked with a hard stare. “Nothing about this shit is right!”

“Kate,” I said in a low voice.

I looked through the rear-view mirror and saw Steve and Eric on the ground sitting together. Steve clutched his arms around Eric’s shoulders tightly.

“Wait here a second,” I told Kate and exited the SUV. I walked to Steve and Eric and saw Steve’s eyes wide open and his eyebrows apart. His pupils looked dilated and he didn’t blink at all.

“Steve,” I called out. “Steve.”

Eric scrunched his face. He glanced down at Steve briefly before looking back up at me. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. All of a sudden, he just shut down.”

I tapped Steve on his shoulder. He slowly rolled his eyes toward me.

“Hey,” I said calmly.

“St-Stanford?” he quietly asked.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I patted him on the back. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. He pulled himself away from Eric and sat up. “Yeah I’m alright. It’s just…it’s just been a long day.”

“I know,” I nodded.

Steve seemed fine but rattled. I went back inside the SUV and sat beside Kate. Steve and Eric followed in tow and entered in the back. Everyone was quiet. I leaned back in the seat and took a deep breath. I glanced at Kate who trembled.

“Turn the radio on,” I glanced at the radio. “Maybe there’s something explaining what the hell’s happening.”

Her hand trembled as she reached down and turned the radio on. The only thing playing was static. I changed the channels only to find more static on all the channels.

“Guess the snowstorm’s blocking the transmission,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s probably happening in other places and not just here,” Kate pulled out her cellphone and checked it. “Dammit! No service!” she shouted as she banged her fist on the steering wheel.

Kate leaned back in the seat and placed a hand over her face. She threw her hand down onto her lap and stared off with squinted eyes.

“Hu? Is there something wrong?” I asked Kate. She looked down at her phone silently.

“Weird noises, snowstorm, and these crazy ass birds. All this shit seemed to come out of nowhere,” she turned to me with her eyes still squinted. “Our trip, we were supposed to go to the lodge and have fun. I don’t…I don’t understand-.”

“Yeah,” Steve called out. “There’s no denying what we just saw out there. People were getting killed by birds. Why were they doing that? Why were they randomly murdering people for no rhyme or reason? Where did they even come from? There must had been a million birds back there in the woods, in the winter. That’s not normal.”

“I like to know more about that earthquake,” Eric said. “This all seemed to start after that happened. I wonder if it’s the cause of this somehow, like maybe the seismic waves affected the birds. I didn’t even know earthquakes happened in the winter.”

I wanted to talk but nothing came to mind. I felt the need to brighten everyone’s spirit. Instead, I said the first thing that popped into my mind.

“Despite all of this, we didn’t even think of poor Rhoda. We just abandoned her to die. She probably needed our help but instead we ditched her. We were her friends and how did we show it? None of us found her and brought her back.”

No one spoke. They all had their faces lowered and their eyes teary. The silence was long. I didn’t know how long we all went without saying a thing. The awkwardness and atmosphere got to me, so I exited the SUV. I walked toward one of the barn’s walls and leaned my back against it. I grabbed my forehead with both hands and slid them down my hair. I thought about what happened to make sense of the situation, but I just didn’t understand it. I paced around trying to figure out what to do next.

‘This shit is unbelievable,’ I thought. I continued pacing around but didn’t know where I was going. I wiped my mouth and grunted.

“Shit!” I shouted and punched the wooden wall.

One of the SUV’s doors opened. Eric stepped out and walked toward me.

“Stanford,” he called out. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” I grunted and shook my hand. “I just needed to step out for a second.”

A thunderous boom echoed which caused us to jump.

“What was that?” Eric asked. We ran to the double doors. The wooden wall beside the right door had a large vertical crack near the bottom that was wide enough to see through but didn’t seem large enough for snow to get in. I bent down and peeped outside. It was mostly pitch-black, but the area was visible. The snow continued coming down hard but was now also seemingly thunder storming.

“Thunder storming?” Eric asked. “I didn’t think it did that in the winter.”

“It does,” I said. “Just not often, especially out here in the country.”

Streaks of lightning illuminated outside. There were silhouettes of birds flying around in the distance. Thunder boomed and shook the ground. One of the SUV’s back doors opened, and Steve stepped out and walked to me and Eric with a slackened face.

“Is it thundering?” he asked.

“It is,” I said.

“But why?” Steve asked.

“Because warm air currents in the atmosphere mix with the cold air of winter creating storms,” I said. “Sometimes it’s during snow showers. But like I told Eric, it happens rarely.”

“Oh, I never knew that” he said. “I never thought it would storm during the winter. Just in summer.”

I kept watching outside. The snow didn’t seem like it would end anytime soon. The birds squawked in the distance. There were sounds of thumping as if they were crashing into things. I wondered how we’d get out of this and how we’d seek help because help wasn’t coming. I thought about a lot of things, random things but I didn’t know why. I thought about my house, everyone here, the people outside. Most of all I thought about my friend who we left to die.

‘Rhoda.’

In that instant I swore I heard someone screaming in pain far away. Maybe it was on the freeway. Maybe it was far behind the barn. If that was indeed a person, I felt for them.